Replies

So, the answer to my question: Care to list a couple of dozen? should have been, "No, I can't. My post was mostly fabrication." Thank you for playing.

I had a choice of answering your posts or catching the train home on time.

That choice was a no brainer.

Anyway heres a dozen examples from one year:

Still the Bad Guys: A Review of This Season's TV Arabs By Jack Shaheen

The 1984-85 television season continued the trend toward denigrating the people of the Middle East. Over 30 programs—from the the popular A-Team to Bugs Bunny cartoons—enhanced stereotypical portraits. Arabs were seen as a group separate from Americans—an indigestible lump, a foreign body.

Here are some selected distortions, many of which appeared in programs that had nothing to do with Arabs.

* On the A-Team series, a Middle Eastern princess will marry some rebel "with a towel around his head." The A-Team beats the socks off the rebel and his henchmen.

* In a Bob Hope Special, Hope, dressed as a used-camel salesman, boasts: "Now that the Arabs own Beverly Hills there'll be caravans down Rodeo Drive."

* Hail to the Chief features Libyan terrorists who hold Bob Hope's USO tour hostage. "Give me a unit of Green Berets and I'll level falafel land in half an hour," shouts the U.S. general. Chief flashes anti-Arab barbs weekly.

* On Dynasty, Ahmad, the Arab character, proves no Arab can be trusted. Rather than keep a promise to John Forsythe, he beds Joan Collins.

* Top-rated music videos, Rock the Casbah (The Clash) and California Girls (David Lee Roth) feature Arabs flaunting oil riches and ogling blondes.

* Lace I and Lace II focus on a desert kingdom, complete with veiled, cackling women, clad in black.

* The TV movie Key to Rebecca, focuses on Sonia, an Egyptian belly dancer with kinky sexual habits, who hates the British. Joining Sonia are hordes of Nazi-loving Egyptians, including the half-German villain.

* A Miss Marple TV movie begins with Marple happily arriving in London. On entering her hotel, however, she is stunned by a six-and-a-half foot tall Arab 'giant' and his three dwarf-like wives.

* In a Highway to Heaven episode a man dresses as an Arab to enhance the value of some homes. Such a ploy ensures "a fair shake."

* On Cover-Up Arabs are drug merchants with "bad breath" who kidnap American women. White slavery is the theme and the destination is Tunisia—"the marketplace of the world."

* On What's Happenin', Amid, the Arab, is a hit-and-run driver who sups on goat's milk and pigeon's brains. His Rolls Royce demolishes the protagonist's car. Amid won't pay up-his father has business relations with the U.S. government.

* In Bugs Bunny's 1001 Rabbit Tales Bugs is told to tell the Sheik's "bentheaded son" a story. If not, Bugs will be "beheaded" or "boiled in oil."